Lauren Scharhag writes

A Feast for Mosquitoes

I love the mountains: the Blue Ridge,

the Great Smokies with their dim charcoal halos,

the aspen-crowned Rockies.

At those altitudes, I am one of the few

who breathes more easily,

relieved of the fear of insects,

arms and legs bared to the cold, clear air.

When I was three years old,

I spent a month at Children’s Mercy:

sepsis from an infected mosquito bite.

I had to endure shots thrice daily;

but even at that age, I paid attention

to what preceded the pain.

I learned the rounds, and one day,

when I knew the doctor and his hypodermic

were imminent, I locked myself in the bathroom.

I was afraid of the dark, and too small

to reach the light switch,

but I refused to come out.

A janitor was summoned with a master key.

It took three nurses to drag me back

to the bed and hold me down.

As I struggled, my grandfather’s face appeared

above me, locked in a grim acceptance.

It was the same look he got whenever

he dug splinters out from under my skin

with his pocketknife, or that time

I stepped in broken glass and left a trail

of bloody footprints up 21^st.  

All my life, people have joked

that my blood must be sweet,

and it’s true that mosquitoes

have discriminating taste.

The moment I step out-of-doors,

a brown cloud descends,

necessitating long sleeves and jeans

despite the heat.

Once, just walking

to the next-door neighbor’s house,

I garnered eighteen bites.

Once, I wore sandals

for an evening stroll,

and my feet were so ravaged,

I couldn’t wear shoes for a week.

Every year, I wonder if my body

has changed enough for them

to move on, and every spring,

I get my answer in the form

of itchy red welts.

But I get some of my own back:

keeping cans of foul aerosols,

putting up bat houses,

releasing spiders into the garden,

and lighting fat, pungent pillars of citronella

while offering a prayer to whatever patron saint

delivers us from bloodsuckers.

 Mosquito Festival -- Remedios Varo

Lauren Scharhag writes

Tiny Effigies

Fort Walton Mound, FL

I only just learned this mound was here, taking up

less than half a block of busy street lined

with tourist shops and crosswalks, hidden deep

in the shade of live oaks and cabbage palm.

Not at all like the immense earthworks I’ve learned of

in art history classes: ten stories tall, situated over

thousands of acres, platformed and terraced,

or else molded into shapes of great beasts and men,

whose full aspects are visible only to the gods.

This one is a comparatively humble twelve feet,

flat-topped, reduced by time, long abandoned even

when Confederate soldiers made their camp on its apex,

the better to watch for enemy ships.

It was they who dug the bones, recognized

fellow soldiers by their shattered ribcages, the holes

in their skulls; ancient nut and oyster shells

sucked clean by ravenous mouths. Surely they noticed

how little changes in the life-and-death instruments

as they shucked their own meager dinners with a Bowie knife.

Once, a chief or high priest would’ve lived

on top of this mound. What must it have been,

to make your home upon the death knoll? Was it he

who carved the tiny effigies found at the site,

sculpted in the same clay that holds the bodies?

The museum plaques tell so little, though

the artifacts themselves chatter loud their individuality:

distinct head shapes, smiles, beards, pierced ears,

topknots, even masks. Yet how this place teems with tiny life:

mockingbirds and squirrels, scrub lizards,

all building nests, the carpenter ants erecting

their own hills in the green light, where the red buckeye

weeps hard tears.

Lauren Scharhag writes

The Nostalgia Project

When my mother and stepfather downsized

from the house I grew up in to something

befitting retirees, there was almost forty years

of stuff shoved in basements and closets, despite

diligent garage sales and trips to Goodwill.

A heap of old photo albums came to me,

lone survivor of so many deaths, divorces,

and remarriages, a final loop of wool

in an otherwise unraveled garment.

One album went back to the 1920s,

with edge tabs and black pages,

falling apart, lost photos leaving behind

ghostly windows, all the faces unknown to me.

Others were from the 70s and early 80s,

sticky, yellowing leaves that have lost

their adhesiveness, whose cellophane sleeves

have grown loose and crinkled.

Some of the photos themselves are faded or scratched.

I dutifully begin scanning them so they can be

easily shared with distant relatives, to see if anyone’s

memories reach back that far, files labeled

and sorted to the best of my knowledge. I will

transfer the photos themselves to new albums

to try to preserve the original snapshots and Polaroids.

Twenty albums take me months to get through.

At the same time, I think, mere months

to preserve the artifacts of at least five generations?

That something that’s supposed to be so permanent

and historic can be so easily undone?